Fat has found numerous applications in a wide variety of food products not only because of its nutritional importance, but also because of its wide range of functional properties and its suitability for combining with a wide variety of dry ingredients, often powdery ingredients. In such applications, the fat part is usually added to a homogeneous mass of the dry ingredients in the liquid state or under shortenised form. The fat may also be combined with water and some dry ingredients. When emulsifying the fat with the water a homogeneous product is obtained.
The structure of a product depends both on its recipe—i.e. the amount and nature of the fat and the other ingredients present in the product—and the process used to produce the product. Processing steps such as emulsification, heating, tempering, influence the structure of the product. Fat is incorporated because of its functional properties, in particular its effect on the structure of the final food product. An example of a food product where the nature of the fat has a prominent effect on the structure is chocolate: its hard structure is due to the presence of cocoa butter which is a hard fat. Confectionery creams like medium hard sandwich creams contain a medium hard fat; spreads for example chocolate spreads contain high amounts of liquid oil giving the typical soft and spreadable end product. In these examples the fat phase is combined with at least one powdery ingredient (for example sugar, milk powder, cocoa powder, etc.). Depending on the nature and the envisaged structure of the intended product, a fat with a specific Solid Fat Content (SFC) as a function of temperature will be selected. Typical SFC-profiles for different applications are illustrated in EP-A-739.589 table 22a. The SFC-profile mainly depends on the nature of the fatty acids making up the (tri)glycerides of the fat, on the triglyceride composition and on the method used to solidify the fat—in particular the crystallisation time and temperature, whether the product has been subjected to tempering or not, etc. Whether a fat is liquid or solid at a certain temperature is not only determined by the chain length of the fatty acids, but in particular by the type of fatty acid, i.e. whether it is saturated or non-saturated, and in case of non-saturated fatty acids by the type of isomer, whether it is cis or trans. Products requiring a rather firm structure, will usually contain a fat with a rather high SFC-profile which will contain a quite high amount of saturated fatty acids and/or trans isomers of non-saturated fatty acids.
Saturated fatty acids (SAFA) are abundantly present in natural fats like cocoa butter, palm oil, palmkernel oil, coconut oil, tallow, etc. Trans fatty acids (TFA) of natural origin are mainly found in ruminant fats. Natural vegetable oils and fats do not contain this trans isomer. Although TFA are unsaturated fatty acids, their structure and melting profile is much closer to that of the corresponding saturated fatty acid than to that of their cis-form.
At present, a wide range of hard structural fats which are suitable for producing structured products is naturally available. However, there is still a need for fat compositions which have a solid structure and which are predominantly based on fatty acids with a C14 to C20 hydrocarbon chain. Hydrogenation of liquid oils like soy, rapeseed, sunflower, groundnut oil, also called “hardening” has been widely used as a technique to obtain hard fats. Hardening involves conversion of unsaturated fatty acids into saturated fatty acids (SAFA), as well as conversion of cis-unsaturated fatty acids into trans-isomers (TFA), both of which contribute in converting the liquid oil into a hard fat upon hydrogenation. Although for functional reasons to obtain the desired structure incorporation of fats with higher amounts of SAFA and/or TFA will be recommended, for nutritional reasons consumption of these fatty acids is to be limited as they increases the risk to the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases. Therefore official instances, like WHO, have issued maximum recommended levels of daily intake of SAFA and TFA. Studies on the consumption patterns of fats in food like the “Transfair study” indicate that in several countries the daily intake of both SAFA and TFA is too high.
There is thus a need for triglyceride containing food systems, structured food products and structured edible products with a limited SAFA and/or TFA content, which nevertheless show the desired hard or semi-hard structure that is appropriate for the intended application. There is also a need for triglyceride compositions which enable producing edible products with a sufficiently hard structure on the one hand and a limited level of SAFA and/or TFA on the other hand. There is also a need to a process for producing such compositions.